Murzuk

This man, Mohamed Lino, self-appointed spokesman for the Tabus, will be hosting me.

Here, still far from Murzuk, the telephone lines come to an end.

The south has been cut off from the rest of the world for seven months now.

Allah Akbar.

I traveled 1,000 kilometers from Tripoli with a delegation of Tabus, a tribe that had been completely abandoned by the old regime.

This man, Mohamed Lino, self-appointed spokesman for the Tabus, will be hosting me.

Here, still far from Murzuk, the telephone lines come to an end.

The south has been cut off from the rest of the world for seven months now.

Two months later, the New Zealand division uses that same route to outflank the fortified Axis defensive line at Marath from the south, a manoeuvre that helps break one of the last major defensive positions standing between 8th Army and total victory in North Africa.

It is, in miniature, everything the unit has done since Gebel, Sheriff and Murzuk, finding the way through ground everyone else has written off and letting a much larger force follow behind.

Axis forces in Tunisia surrender in May 1943, and with them goes the entire premise the long-range desert group was built around.

There is no more open desert flank to watch, there is no more coast road running through contested, thinly held territory.